With Friends Like These
by Legendary Legacy
Summary: Man, Keitaro's best friend is SO COOL! The way he's so much better than everyone else and gets all the girls and steals the spotlight from the others! Wow, it's almost like he's not even human... Mockfic. This summary is decent, but could be better.


I've previously mocked Self-Insert Mary Sues in the Narutoverse several years back, but after finding quite a few terrible stories over here, I feel safe in saying that the Love Hina section deserves it, as well. If for no other reason than all the SI-MS's seem to appear in Love Hina fics in the exact same fashion, so not only are they stupid and badly written, they're also redundant and boring: four reasons to hate them.

So here we go.

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With Friends Like These...

A Love Hina Mockfic

By Legendary Legacy

Standard Disclaimer: Love Hina and its characters belong to Akamatsu Ken and whomever he's previously given rights to. The clichéd plot is used by many, but the twist is, to the best of my knowledge, mine.

Mockfic Disclaimer: Anyone who doesn't like the idea of me making fun of a (in my opinion) stupid or overused theme or plotline that you, for whatever reason, enjoy reading or writing, I suggest saving yourself a few precious minutes of your own time and clicking the 'Back' button right now. Don't say I didn't warn you.

And, of course, please enjoy. Or don't. But try to if you can.

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It was a warm evening and Urashima Keitaro was busying himself with sweeping the stone path out front of the Hinata Inn.

It had been a pretty decent day. He hadn't seen much of the girls; Naru had spent most of the day in town shopping with Shinobu and Mutsumi, Kitsune had been vegged out in her room since lunch, Motoko had been on the roof, and Su and Sarah had been shut away in Su's room, hopefully not building something traumatizing, leaving the landlord in relative peace. And, of course, decreasing the number of unfortunate incidents that could have befallen him in any number of ways. Kind of depressing to think that way, but hey, he hadn't been hit yet today, so what more could he say? And now he just had to finish sweeping, go in for dinner, and he could probably squeeze in a few study hours with Naru and Mutsumi before turning in for the night.

So engrossed was he in his task that he didn't notice someone walking up the long stairway toward him. It was a man; tall, spry-looking with some noticeable muscle, he had long, unruly red hair and wire-rimmed glasses covering chestnut brown eyes. He wore an open black vest over fatigue-pants and black combat boots. At his hip was a short sword in a ruby-encrusted scabbard, and a really cool tattoo of a dragon could partially be seen across his chest. Or maybe it was a tiger, or a wolf, it was kind of hard to tell. Whatever it was, it was certainly cool nonetheless.

It wasn't until the man was a few steps away that Keitaro finally looked up and saw him. As soon as he did, he froze and his eyes widened in fear. The man, assuming that his intimidating appearance must have startled the landlord, held up his hands in a gesture of peace. "Whoa there, pal. Didn't mean to scare you like that."

"Y-you're...you're..." Keitaro struggled to get out, looking anything but calm.

"Leon," the man helpfully finished for him. "Don't tell me you forgot about your old grade-school buddy, Keitaro?"

Keitaro looked like he was about to cry out for help, but his mouth stopped working and his eyes took on a glazed appearance. As quickly as it happened, it ended, and Keitaro was smiling. "Leon! Of course. Wow, I barely recognized you."

Leon laughed good-naturedly and swept a hand through his hair. "Well, it has been a few years, so I guess it's understandable. You don't look like you've changed much since last time. Found that promise girl of yours yet?"

Keitaro rubbed his head in embarrassment. "Well, uh...maybe. I mean, I think I know who she is, I just haven't..."

"Made it into Todai or confessed to her yet?"

Keitaro nodded weakly, causing Leon to laugh harder. "You're just as pathetic as I remember, Kei! You still can't do anything right without me holding your hand the whole time. Man, what a loser!"

Keitaro could only smile sheepishly. Good ol' Leon; always putting him down and pointing out his many failures like that. No wonder they were best friends.

"So uh, what brings you here?" he asked once Leon had stopped laughing at his expense.

"Well, I heard that you owned your own dorm now and was wondering if you could put me up for a while. I'll be inheriting a big trust fund from my parents in about a month, so I'll be able to buy my own place then. But for now I'm sort of homeless. Wha'da ya say?"

Keitaro frowned. "Actually, this is an all-girls dorm, and the only reason I'm allowed to be here is because my grandma gave it to me-"

Leon's stare suddenly intensified, causing Keitaro's eyes to lose focus again for a moment.

"-but I'm sure no one would mind making an exception for you, old buddy!" he finished, as if that had been what he'd planned to say all along. "Just let me finish sweeping and then we can go in and I'll introduce you to everyone and get you settled in. Wanna give me a hand?"

"Nah," Leon said, waving him off. "I'll just watch you do that while I tell you how much better my life has been going than yours lately."

Keitaro smiled again. Good ol' Leon.

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Fifteen minutes later, the two boys walked into the dorm.

"-and then, after I was awarded the Medal of Honor for carrying my injured squad members back to base after getting caught in that air-raid, I came back to Japan so that I could finish up my doctorate in nuclear physics and medicine. Then when I turned nineteen-"

Leon's monologue was interrupted by a loud crash when they entered the front room. Glancing up, they found Naru, who had dropped the pot of what was going to be dinner on the floor and was now staring horror-stricken at the two.

"Are you okay, Naru?" Keitaro asked.

"K-keitaro! Th-th-that's-!"

Keitaro grinned and gestured to his friend. "Oh, don't worry, Naru. This is just Leon, my best friend from grade school."

"Keitaro, you idiot! That's not-!"

Leon smirked. Naru's eyes glazed over.

"That's not what I'm angry about!" she continued after a slight pause. "I'm angry at you for making me ruin the dinner that Shinobu worked so hard on!"

"B-but I didn't-"

"No excuses!" she interrupted, charging him in a fury, her clenched fist cocked to send him into next week. Fortunately, Keitaro was spared a long walk home as Leon effortlessly grabbed the incoming fist.

"Why are you being so violent to him?" he demanded.

"Because he's a pervert and he deserves it!" she growled, practically salivating from rage.

Leon frowned. "Well, how would you like it if someone hit you every time you made a mistake?"

Naru deflated almost immediately. "I...I never thought of it like that." Without warning, she burst into tears. "Oh god, I'm a monster! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"Just don't let it happen again," Leon commanded. "I'd hate to see one of Keitaro's other friends get hurt."

Keitaro felt he should comfort his distraught crush when Kitsune, Mutsumi and Motoko ran into the room, having been drawn first by the loud crash earlier and then by Naru's sobs.

"Naru, what's wrong?" Mutsumi asked before setting eyes on Leon. "Oh, and who is this?"

Kitsune and Motoko both noticed him moments later. Both panicked and Motoko reached for her sword.

Leon casually tucked his hair behind his right ear. All three girl's eyes glazed over.

"He's quite the stud, whoever he is," Kitsune said, staring him up and down multiple times and trying not to drool. Motoko remained silent, but grudgingly agreed with her.

Unbeknownst to any of them, Shinobu had already been watching from the kitchen, and the moment the other three girls had entered the room, she had snuck out unseen and dashed as quickly as she could up the stairs.

"Girls, this is Leon," Keitaro introduced them, now that Naru had gotten a hold of herself. "Leon, this is Naru, Mutsumi, Kitsune and Motoko, four of my tenants."

"Pleasure to meet you all," Leon responded, shaking each girl's hand in turn.

"Please, call me Mitsune," Kitsune requested, already feeling that this man was worthy of using her real name instead of the silly nickname that everyone else used.

As Mutsumi stepped forward to shake his hand, she slipped on nothing, and would have had a very nasty fall had Leon not sprang forward and caught her in time.

"Oh my," she giggled, blushing sweetly from her position in his arms as he smiled down at her. "How gallant."

Motoko silently assessed the man. Clearly he was a rare gentleman, and not a worthless pervert like his friend Urashima. She wondered why on Earth he would tolerate the pitiful man to associate with him so closely. Then she took note of the marvelous sword at his waist. From his stance alone she could tell that he was a great swordsman, but if he were carrying that blade, it could only mean...

"Sir, what sword style do you train in?" she asked.

"Oh, it's called the Devil's Scream School. I'm the descendant of it's founder."

Motoko couldn't believe her ears. "That's the sister-style of the God's Cry School, of which I'm the heir to! It's been said that the two styles complement each other perfectly when used in battle!" She knelt down before him. "Please, would you be willing to train me, Leon-sensei?"

Leon laughed cheerfully. "Sure, if you promise to go out with me."

Motoko thought about it for a second. It sounded like a win-win situation no matter how she looked at it. "Very well."

"By the way guys," Keitaro spoke up. "Leon's going to be staying with us for a few weeks. Does anyone have a problem with that?"

No one did, of course. Why would they? Leon was such a great guy; sweet, funny, polite, honest, sexy... Hell, the girls were of the like mind that maybe they could kick Keitaro out and give the dorm to Leon instead.

"Excellent," Leon exclaimed. "Well, now that everything is settled, maybe I'll go offer some help to the chef of the house to whip up a new dinner for you all. Just to show my appreciation."

Sigh, what a great guy.

As Leon headed toward the kitchen, a large weight suddenly landed on him and a pair of tan legs appeared dangling from his shoulders. He looked up, seeing a little tan, blonde girl perched above him.

"Hi there," he greeted, preparing to turn on the charm.

"Hi," Su replied. She held up a glowing red ball, about the size of a tennis ball. "Can you hold this for a second?"

Leon reflexively caught the object as she dropped it. He stared at it, feeling a strange pulse coming from the three-eyed symbol on it. "What is it?"

"It's something I created a few months ago. It's an armor-breaker."

The man frowned in confusion. "Armor-breaker?"

Su nodded and flipped backward onto the floor. "Yep. More specifically, a Plot-Armor-Breaker."

"...Plot-Arm-" Leon's eyes widened and he turned back around. His once lightning-fast reflexes were amazingly sluggish now, and his sharp mind was suddenly muddled. This being the case, he had no time to contemplate or react to what was happening before a flash of steel separated his head from his shoulders.

Motoko resheathed her sword as Su reclaimed her PAB from the fallen corpse's grip and the others all sagged to the floor. From the stairway, Shinobu and Sarah poked their heads around the corner and, seeing that everyone appeared to be safe, they ran down to check on Keitaro and the girls.

"Is everyone all right?" Shinobu asked.

"I...I think so," Keitaro said, holding a hand to his head. "You're a lifesaver, Shinobu. You too, Su." Muttered agreements came from the others.

Sarah looked suspiciously at Keitaro. "So, another 'friend' of yours, dork?"

He held his hands up defensively. "I swear to God, I don't know where these things keep coming from! I've never in my life known anyone named Leon! Just like I never knew anyone named Jack, or Wolf, or Ginryu, or Shadow, or Chaos, or any of the others! I don't know why they keep coming after us, but honestly, it's not my fault!" He said the last part while looking at Naru, as if she were the one he was really trying to convince.

Naru just sighed and nodded, already accepting his plea. It wasn't like she was mad at Keitaro anyway, just mad at the situation in general.

"Oh dear, what just happened, exactly?" Mutsumi asked, not understanding at all what the others were talking about. "Ever since that boy showed up I felt like I wasn't really myself."

Naru cursed under her breath. "Sorry, Mutsumi, we should have warned you as soon as you got here."

Mutsumi blinked owlishly. "Warned me?"

"Uh-huh," Keitaro picked up. "See, for a long time now, these...people, I guess...have been showing up out of the blue and claiming to be an old friend of mine from when I was younger. And I don't know how they do it, but even though I know I've never met them before, they somehow always convince me that what they're saying is true. Every single time!"

Shinobu placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't feel bad, sempai; the same thing happens to all of us."

"Yeah," Kitsune agreed. "It's like, even though we already know better, we still have no choice but to believe them. It's like they're brainwashing us or something."

"But they're just so ridiculous about it that it makes it even more embarrassing when we believe them." Keitaro pointed toward 'Leon's corpse. "He had me believing he was a lieutenant colonel for a branch of the US Army that I don't think even exists, and also earned three PhDs from Harvard and Todai at the age of eighteen. The guy before him was an expert marksman with guns that shot magic bullets, and was also a master of nine different forms of armed and unarmed combat. The guy before that said he had a freakin' thousand year old dragon spirit trapped inside him...! I mean, just because they can make us act or think however they want doesn't mean they shouldn't at least TRY to make themselves seem like real people."

"Oh my, so what do these people actually do when they come here?" Mutsumi asked.

Naru shrugged. "Anything they want, really, since none of us can do anything to stop them. Or, rather, we never feel like we need to stop them until it's already over. Of course, it was a lot worse before Su created that Armor-Breaker ball to bail us out. Before then we just had to wait around helplessly until they went away on their own."

"You're welcome," Su piped in with a small bow.

"Fortunately, aside from insulting or treating some of us like crap for one reason or another, or just mooching off of us and acting superior in every way imaginable, they usually never do anything too terrible," Keitaro admitted.

"Speak for yourself, Urashima," Motoko growled. "You're not the one that these fiendish creatures always set their lustful interests on." The samurai shuddered at the memories.

"I still say that they're aliens," Sarah stated, face set in absolute certainty. "Sending spies down incognito to figure out our behavioral patterns, and scouting for potential breeding stock," she added toward Motoko, causing the older girl to shudder again. "-before they send in their invasion fleets."

"But if that were the case, why would they keep sending them to us after we've already killed so many of them?" Su asked, to which her partner-in-crime shrugged.

"I dunno. Why do Batman's enemies keep committing crimes in Gotham when they could just as easily move to another city that doesn't have a superhero protecting it twenty-four seven?"

"Well, to be fair, most of Batman's enemies are criminally insane," Keitaro pointed out.

"But you digress," Naru intervened, hoping to keep a serious conversation from turning into a pointless comic book debate.

"How many of these people have there been?" Mutsumi asked.

"I stopped counting at ten," Keitaro answered. The others made sounds of confirmation that they too had lost count a long time ago.

"My, oh my," the Okinawan mumbled, feeling great sympathy for her friends. She glanced over at the dead body, which was making quite the mess on the floor. "So, what do we do now?"

With a tired sigh, Keitaro walked over and picked up the disembodied head. "Same thing we do every time, I guess: Bury this guy out back in the woods with the others, try to forget that the whole thing ever happened, and hope it never happens again."

It was a rather depressing sentiment, but then, they were living in depressing times. And until they figured out where these things kept coming from or what their actual goal was, there wasn't much else they could do but wait for Su to start mass-producing her PABs (or for Sarah to convince them to start wearing tinfoil hats, maybe).

At least then they would stand a better chance.

The End

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Hmm...well, irritation sort of got in the way of most of the attempted humor, so my apologies that this wasn't as funny as I'd intended it to be. Oh well, better luck next time.

Til then, have a nice day.

LL


End file.
